


set the place alight

by stormss



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Introspection, M/M, Old Married Couple, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28004724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormss/pseuds/stormss
Summary: The motel room is unassuming: plain walls, plain sheets, a mass-produced landscape painting of mountains. Joe closes his eyes and feels the burn of being awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and when he just sees the blood coating Nicky's chin again, he blinks the haunting images back.It takes a moment, but Nicky comes out of the bathroom, the tap still dripping a steady beat, and he quietly says: "There's a pool out back."
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 240
Collections: The Old Guard ▶ Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani / Nicky | Nicolo di Genova





	set the place alight

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i had this idea and i just couldn't stop until i wrote it. basically this just looks at post-mission rituals and domesticity, set against the backdrop of a cheap, vaguely north-american motel because why not. idk i wrote this in one sitting when taking a break from my multiple final papers and tried to edit it a little, and now here we are!
> 
> the title comes from _home with you_ by fka twigs. my [tumblr!](https://reyesstrand.tumblr.com/)

For the most part, Copley knows what jobs will speak to them most. 

They break up trafficking rings and save kidnapped children that would otherwise fall to the wayside in terms of importance for government-backed extraction missions. They funnel money out of the hands of big-oil companies and into charities and soup kitchens and gentrified communities. Nile still manages to look both baffled and touched when their time is spent on the ground with organizations and non-profits that just need extra hands, under carefully crafted aliases and slight alterations to their image, just to be safe. 

It's been five years, but Nile still seems taken aback by the smaller ways they do good; not only to the world at large but to each other, through home-cooked meals whenever they get the chance or movie-nights to decompress or the several nights now they've spent in various countries with the same scene playing out: with Nicky elbow-deep in suds as he does the dishes because the routine of it calms him, Andy passed out on whatever comfortable surface is present in the safe-house of the week, Joe on the couch with Nile sitting cross-legged on the floor, letting him carefully fix her braids while she taps impatiently at her phone, waiting for the results of the Buzzfeed quiz to load so she can tell Joe what nineties movie trope he is. 

It's nice, is the thing. 

And so it always throws them off kilter when jobs go to shit. 

But for them, when jobs go to shit, they usually do so quickly and all-at-once, like a house of cards toppling over. Their comms—one of the many benefits of having Copley—will be lost to interference, their ear pieces squealing as bullets start firing. And Joe's already not in the best of moods, dealing with Copley's American colleague for this job, so his day becomes understandably worse when Nile yells something about an explosive and Joe locks eyes with Nicky before gritting his teeth and diving to his left, where Andy's standing. She goes down under his weight and Nile seems to find cover, but Nicky's shot through the knee at the last second and is right in the line of fire when the bomb goes off. 

It's terrible. It's happened before, and it's never pretty. 

His ears still ringing, Joe grunts as he gets to his feet, eyes dragging down Andy to make sure she's okay. She just gives him a look like he's got two-heads and he jumps into action, moving through the debris to find Nicky. He's lost a leg and a hand, and is covered with grime and dust and blood, but it isn't the worst death by explosion they've seen before. Joe just grabs him under the armpits and pulls, getting them both to cover. He feels a slow, thrumming pulse under his fingers when he checks, but by the time he's settled on his knees, Nicky's gone. He pushes all thoughts from his mind but this: the feeling of his palms pressed to clammy cold cheeks, staring at dead pale eyes, the trickle of red coating Nicky's chin. 

For the millionth, maybe billionth time, Joe sits and waits and thinks _please please please come back to me please Nicolo please_ and the all-encompassing relief he feels comes out in waves as Nicky gasps and he lets out a shaky exhale; his heart gulps down air and squeezes Joe's wrist with his right— _only_ , at the moment—hand, just as Nile yells out for backup, _like, yesterday_. 

"I'm good," Nicky gets out, his lungs still finishing healing, his breath rattling out of him. "I promise," he adds, and then: "Go help her." 

He hates leaving him to heal alone, especially when he's still gritting his teeth through regrowing a leg. But he tells him to, so Joe moves on instinct, sparing a millisecond to smooth Nicky's hair from his forehead and wince past the blood to kiss his brow, before he's up and running and pulling focus from Nile as a guy who's been blindly shooting his weapon for five minutes starts to finally figure out how to aim. Within moments, he hears a shout from behind him as Nicky gets back in the fight as best he can from his position—his beloved might be down a limb or two but he's still got a sniper's precision. 

When it's done, Joe's just got tendrils of emotions flicking through him: fear and anger and exhaustion are a dangerous melody, and so he just squeezes the back of Nile's neck when she steps closer to him, touching their foreheads, before he sends her off to find Andy with plans on meeting back up at the car. 

It turns out that Andy, like always, is several steps ahead of them; she's got Nicky's good arm thrown over her shoulders and he's limping on a slowly-strengthening leg, the two of them beelining for the car she's somehow found time to pull closer to the compound. She looks over her shoulder at them expectantly, eyes still alight with a successful, albeit messy, job. 

Joe just really, _really,_ wants to never step foot in this city again. 

* * *

They stop at a gas station for burnt coffee and pastries that are close to being stale, but it gives them the fuel they need to stay awake. It's been a day since they left their safe-house and that's a tucked away apartment three hours out, and so with all of them feeling the weight of the day, Andy suggests finding a place to lay low until tomorrow. Nile jokes that she's got to have a cave sitting around this side of the world somewhere, and Nicky quietly suggests somewhere with running water, if they wouldn't mind. 

It's enough to remind them that he died, pretty horrifically, and they never take it for granted. And so they start looking out for a motel that will be seedy enough to not blink at the state of their appearance but nice enough to let them rest. Nile hums along to the soft harmonies on the radio, something she apparently does in an attempt to stay alert, and then points out her window in the passenger seat at a possible contender. 

They drive around the block, but figure it'll have to do. 

Once they park the car, Andy hangs back, setting her gaze about the perimeter. The motel is nice enough—a one-storey building that curves in an L-shape around the parking lot with the blue paint on each door peeling off in different places. Besides their car, there's only three other vehicles in the lot, which they can work with.

Joe clocks the office with the blinking green _VACANCY_ sign in the window, and as the sun slowly starts its descent, he heads inside and chats with the woman behind the counter and with his charm he gets them two adjoining rooms. As she's typing _Joe Jones_ into the computer that could, Joe thinks, be be older than the woman herself, he glances out the window and spots his family: Andy still watching the road, Nicky scrubbing his hand down his face, Nile staring down at the last of her coffee. The woman looks up and meets Joe's eyes; she apologizes for the slow computer and says, exasperatedly, "technology, right?"

Joe just offers her a small understanding smile and figures at least there's a good chance at not having any security cameras for Copley to wipe later. 

He manages to keep up the chatter while she books them into the rooms, but as he's thanking her and gripping the two room keys, he's just about ready to drop into the bed and sleep for twelve hours. His smile's the tiniest bit forced as he leaves the office, silently sidling up to Nicky and pressing their shoulders together. 

"Got the deluxe suites, don't worry," Joe says, in an attempt to lighten the mood; Nile rolls her eyes good-naturedly at him before holding out her hand for the key to her and Andy's room. 

They stroll down to their rooms tucked into the corner of the building, after Andy stops in front of the vending machine and punches at one of the two in-service buttons until it rewards her with some of her much-loved candy. Joe watches as Nile hikes the strap of her duffel up higher on her shoulder—she's started collecting little patches from airports and stationary stores and souvenir stands in every country they visit, and they're starting to take over the unassuming green of the bag's fabric. He's noticed she always seems to have her eyes peeled, and it speaks to their time together: they know how to move around each other, they know how the dynamic functions. Leaving the two women at their room, Joe and Nicky take exactly five more steps before they're in front of a mostly-blue door with a crooked _8_ staring back at them. 

The motel room is unassuming: plain walls, plain sheets, a mass-produced landscape painting of mountains. Joe closes his eyes and feels the burn of being awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and when he just sees the blood coating Nicky's chin again, he blinks the haunting images back. Nicky immediately heads for the bathroom, leaving the door open as he tugs his shirt off. Joe looks around some more, dropping their bag on the dresser before dropping himself down on the bed, noticing some water-damage stains along the trim of the farthest wall, but from the sound of it there's a functioning shower, along with a decent mattress and a door that locks. 

It's enough. 

"Nicky—" Joe starts, running a hand down his face. They haven't said much since his love was blown to pieces, unable to find the words like usual after such a gruesome death. He sighs, and says, a little louder to be heard over the running water: " _Nicolo._ " 

It takes a moment, but Nicky comes out of the bathroom, the tap still dripping a steady beat, and he quietly says: "There's a pool out back." 

It's not much, but it's a start to their usual back-and-forth that sometimes takes a while to return when one of them dies and the other doesn't. Joe absently twirls his ring back and forth before he sits up, looking at Nicky until he wordlessly moves to stand between his legs. When he does, Joe presses his face to Nicky's stomach; he closes his eyes and breathes deep and feels his love sink his fingers into his curls. After a moment, he looks up, and sees that Nicky's no longer looking back at him with dead eyes; he's scrubbed his face and his hands and every other inch of bare skin, and there's love in those eyes, a warm embrace waiting for him like always. 

"You're okay," Joe silently reassures himself, the both of them, in the dialect that only they understand. His fingers curl in and out of the handfuls of shirt he'd grabbed onto when Nicky came into his space. "We're okay." 

"Yusuf," Nicky murmurs, and Joe closes his eyes. They're silent for a few moments, able to hear Nile and Andy talking if they really focus, before Nicky runs his thumb along Joe's nape and then bends at the hip, pressing their foreheads together. Their eyes open at the same time and they both laugh, Nicky snorting at him before pulling away to stand at full height. "Come on. Like I said, there's a pool." 

Joe hums, and stands too. He doesn't let Nicky go too far, though, dropping a kiss to his jaw, to his throat. 

"We should probably wear something this time," he says, mouth slowly forming into a smirk against Nicky's pulsepoint. "Wouldn't want to scar Nile." 

Nicky mutters, with a playful sigh, "Again." 

Joe laughs louder this time and pinches Nicky's hip, making an agreeing noise before kissing him properly. 

* * *

(Whenever they're separated—by distance, though they never like it, or when one faces death without the other by his side—their reunions always feel a little desperate, like their time apart would tempt the stars to rip their gift from their hands. Sometimes they taste of blood, or smoke, or ash, or day-old coffee on the less dramatic days. It is always this: hands trembling over each other, noses tucked into the crook of the neck and shoulder, breathing each other in. Their longest forced split was on the cusp of the twentieth century, too many wars with their skills needed in different continents leaving them no choice but to separate. It lasted all of twelve days. Nicolo will never forget dragging himself and Booker to the rendezvous point in a recently destroyed town; word of rising tension in Europe meant they could all be together again and go at these things together. And Yusuf would be _waiting,_ and there he was, all of a sudden, pacing with a hand buried in the curls he'd had to crop close to his skull during the fighting. Nicolo had grabbed Booker's elbow to pick up his pace, and then Andy had made a noise like she was choking—none of them were used to being apart, not then, not when they didn't have to be. She ran forward and dropped her gear, hair cut short for the first time and tucked under a cap, leaving a cloud of dust behind her as she greeted them. Nicolo had burrowed into her warmth and the curl of her hand against the back of his neck, but then Yusuf was right there, hands on him, and Nicolo barely spared a glance before he had hands on his sides and Yusuf's mouth on his. 

It is always like this. It will never change. Sometimes, the need to feel that they're both really still there runs deeper than any of their personal logic, which promises that one won't leave without the other.) 

* * *

"I don't know, it looks cold," Andy says, frowning down at the pool, which is emitting a soft glow from the neon-lights. The sun is setting and leaving streaks of pink and orange in the sky, and Joe admits it would be a beautiful sight to capture in his sketchbook, even as he drops some towels on the lone plastic lounge chair left by the pool. 

Joe just shrugs, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "We didn't _have_ to invite you, boss. You used to be fun."

"Fuck you," Andy promptly grins, before shoving him—shirt and jeans and all—into the admittedly less-than-warm water. He resurfaces to Nile's hand raised over her clearly trying-not-to-laugh expression, and moves his gaze to Andy's openly cackling self. Nicky looks a little displeased on his behalf, but only for a few seconds; once he catches sight of Joe's wet hair, he grins, arms behind his back. 

Joe loves this man. And so he does what he has to. 

"Nicolo," Joe says, swimming closer to the pool's edge, a little difficult with his heavy clothes. Nicky tries to back up but is met with the solid force of Andy, who blocks his path. _"Beloved_." 

"Don't," Nicky tries, but it's too late. Andy hip-checks him so he's close enough for Joe's hands. And then it's over, Joe curling his fingers around Nicky's wrists and tugging so he's in the shitty water with him. 

"What the hell," Andy mutters, before canon-balling into the pool seconds later. Joe laughs as Nicky comes up for air, pushing his hair from his face. Letting out a stream of colourful language in Italian, Joe just laughs and laughs until Nicky comes up to him and plants his hands on Joe's shoulders, leaning in as if for a kiss, before shoving him under the surface again. 

When he comes up this time, Nicky doesn't waste a second before he's closing the distance between them, a laugh still caught in the air they share as they kiss. His hands are warm and steady against him, slowly curling over his shoulders before moving up his neck to finally settle at his jaw, fingers in his wet beard. Their bodies are fully plastered together, chests heaving against each other, and it's clear that this is a kiss that speaks as loud as words; _we'll be okay_ and _i love you i love you i love you_ like an unspoken hymn between them. Just as Joe cocks his head to the side and attempts to push in deeper, both he and Nicky are pummelled by a splash. 

"You're on," Nicky laughs, diving for Andy to pull her under the water as Nile seems to similarly think _fuck it_ and slips into the pool. 

They all need this, sometimes, and Joe realizes it more than ever as Nile splashes at Andy, both of them grinning like fools. 

It takes twenty minutes before they remember that Andy really could end up sick from being in cold water on a barely-warm evening, and so they get out of the pool and bundle her up in the towels; she's putting on a face though her eyes betray her, as she looks at them as fondly as ever. They watch Nile and Andy slip into their room, bidding them goodnight, before walking with the backs of their palms brushing in the retreat to door number eight. 

With the last of the sunlight spilling through the small window, Nicky gently runs his fingers through Joe's wet curls, before kissing him hard enough to push him back against the door. Joe revels in it, the steady beat of Nicky's pulse under his thumb, the sturdiness of his chest, the barely-there give to his hips when he puts his hands there like they were meant for it. Nicky kisses along his jaw and up to the shell of his ear; presses his mouth to Joe's temple and hairline, before humming into the next kiss to his mouth. 

As night encompasses them and they start to give in to the pull of the bed, Joe kisses every spot on Nicky's face he can easily reach, and then his throat, and then his heart.

All the while, he loves him, and loves him, and says as much in every language he knows, the feelings unchanged for nearly a millennium. And Nicky doesn't—and will never—hesitate even for a breath before saying it back. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments and kudos are appreciated!! <3


End file.
